At home with the Unitarians | Theo Hobson

My time with the device offers a welcome break from some of the most violent accents of Christian worship

unit moved to a Sunday service, close to where I live in Brooklyn. I do not know much about this designation. I knew they did not believe in the Trinity, but that does not make it significantly reduce - or Muslim or Richard Dawkins. Do you believe in God at all? They believe in the divinity of Jesus, but who nevertheless see it as a moral teacher only? I knew she believed in God, back to the 18th century, and rejected the trinity as irrational: they believed in a God of the Enlightenment, rational, and I saw Jesus as the communicator of the divine hero superstition-busting. Is that still believe that?

also knew that at the beginning, this movement was favored by some of the Founding Fathers. Jefferson expressed the hope that soon all the young men in America would be unitary (I guess it's less optimistic about the young women). John Adams was also a big fan. A few decades later the influence of transcendentalism of Emerson and the movement of others. I wanted to know what had become of this strain in the American soul at first.

• We meet at a church hall surprisingly crowded. The service was led by a group of lay women who had recently been in a play called Mother wove the morning. Among the sweet songs, participatory, some accompanied by a ukulele, the women spoke into a microphone nervous hand. The first spoke of his "journey to the goddess." Briefly mentioned the childhood image of God, a cross between Santa and Jesus - causing a ripple of knowing laughter in the congregation. It was the only Once when Jesus said, I think.
Another woman spoke of machismo that he had found in the financial sector, and the relief he found in Native American folklore, and the need to continue to take the "Buffalo Medicine" which I think was a substance metaphor. Another spoke "as a therapist" on some of the issues raised in the work they had done. Another, who identified himself as a humanist, said in Unitarianism had "committed heresy" of do too much emphasis on unity, as if there was no single path to the divine. As he spoke, I noticed a row of old photographs of men, many wearing facial hair, wearing all the serious expressions, as if meditating on God's saving unit. They looked impressive in our last song, Ancient Mother, I intend to call for the baskets containing the percussion instruments were hand in hand. It was a pleasure, some people were really into it and make whooping sounds amazing animals

I have no idea if this spiritualized feminism is a common element of this community, perhaps most of the week are men who speak Husky, the rational sense of peace while have Gone Fishing. But at least three-quarters of the congregation was a woman. And it was as if the language of therapeutic self-affirmation, whether feminist or not, was very well established here. It is now apparently denying any unitary form only path to truth, but there is still an element of unity to justify the name of the name. His deep respect for the leader

I left with the feeling that it was very harmless. And perhaps the fundamental difference with the Christian worship. In Christian worship there is a sense of risk, we run the risk of stating the idea of ??truth which is somewhat at odds with the natural wisdom and inner peace. And we risk the assertion of a tradition that has an aura of violence - violent rhetoric about the Lord of hosts, and so on - and references to death and the black blood in the ritual. There is a sense of potential danger in Christianity - the religion has been used for violent purposes, and people have suffered martyrdom for him. There is an absolute concern. Unitarianism has about as much sense as a dangerous otherness singalong Tots "at the local library.